Albert Schinzinger (entrepreneur)

Albert Schinzinger (born March 30, 1856 in Freiburg im Breisgau ; † July 20, 1926 in Baden-Baden ) was a German entrepreneur and consul general in Japan . In his closer circle he was called "ASCH".

Life and professional training

Albert Schinzinger was born as the eldest child of the surgeon Albert Schinzinger (1827–1911) and his wife Josefine. Scalk (1832–1874) was born. The family later included two sisters and three brothers. The parents were close to Baden liberalism and welcomed the German Revolution of 1848/1849 . Raised up in Freiburg, Albert attended school here and, presumably at the insistence of his father, had enrolled in 1873 to study medicine at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg . However, after two semesters he left the university again and in 1874 volunteered for the artillery of the Württemberg Army as a one-year volunteer . From 1875 he went through the various stages of development to become an officer and took part in special training courses and officer courses. However, in these six years up to 1881 he was very often ill and therefore had to undergo a longer stay at a spa himself. As Schinzinger 4, he had been a corps loop bearer of Suevia Freiburg , his father's corps, since 1875 . At his garrison base in Ludwigsburg , he met the solo dancer Flora Farchow. When Schinzinger married her on July 5, 1881, he had to quit his service as an officer, as a dancer was not acceptable as the wife of a Württemberg officer. He was released with the rank of captain.

The young couple then moved to Berlin and Albert Schinzinger took on a job as an insurance inspector. During this time he also worked as a volunteer for the Foreign Office . Due to his special skills in dealing with people and his sociability, he took over the office of foreign service in 1884. His first assignment took him to Bangkok as a consular officer for two years . This was followed by three years of employment in the same field of activity in Egypt , at the German embassy in Cairo , from 1886. Here he met Friedrich Alfred Krupp on a business trip to Alexandria . He was currently on a trip to Egypt and, since he liked young Schinzinger in his openness, offered him a job as a technical employee for international business. After Schinzinger's resignation at the Foreign Office, both signed a ten-year contract as technical advisor for the trade in artillery products and raw materials for weapons production in South America. He stayed here for the most part in the years to come and concluded numerous business deals for the Krupp company in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay. For this business he received very good commissions from the Krupp company.

Working in Japan

After the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), the Krupp company oriented itself more towards the East Asian market. After a brief period of familiarization with the new local conditions for Albert Schinzinger, he moved to Japan with his wife in 1896 and initially lived in Yokohama. Even under the conditions of the Asian market, he quickly gained a foothold and developed into a recognized businessman for German-Japanese commercial transactions. In the same year he became a member of the German Society for Natural History and Ethnology of East Asia (OAG) for life. He had a close friendship with the German family of Erwin Bälz (1849–1913), a doctor practicing in Japan . In the first years of his work in Japan, Schinzinger mainly sold military technology for field and mountain artillery to the Japanese army. In the meantime he stayed in Germany from 1898 to 1899, looking after Japanese customers and establishing contacts with German companies. In the meantime he had established a good network in Japan in the most diverse areas of society, but also with government circles and the military. In addition, he was in good contact with many German business people who worked in Japan. When his contract with Krupp expired in 1899, he became the technical representative and seller of C. Illies & Co. Due to the changed situation, he moved with his family from Yokohama to Tokyo in 1900. In order to improve the information and contact between business people, he campaigned in 1902 for the publication of the weekly magazine “German-Japanese Post”, which first appeared on April 26, 1902 in Yokohama. Through this magazine and the articles published in it, a realistic image of Germany was formed for Japan, which he did not want to leave to the English and American publications. In 1903 he accompanied the Bavarian Crown Prince Rupprecht on a trip through Japan and since then has maintained close contact with the military attaché of the German embassy in Tokyo, Major Günther von Etzel .

Although he had no children of his own, Albert Schinzinger became a founding member of the German school association in Yokohama in 1904. He was also an intense and enthusiastic art collector. This brought Albert Schinzinger into contact with the ethnologist and art enthusiast Ernst Grosse , who from 1895 temporarily held a professorship in the field of art at the University of Freiburg. Stimulated by his interest in Japanese traditions and special Japanese art, and supported by his membership in the OAG, Schinzinger published several articles on Japanese hunting traditions and the development of Japanese weaponry in the OAG magazine from 1905. As a knowledgeable expert and translator, he assisted the Japanese scientist K. Nukaga with the publication of the publication “Niku-dan. Human sacrifice. Diary of a Japanese officer during the siege and storming of Port Arthur ”. Between 1905 and 1908, business between Albert Schinzinger, Krupp AG and the Japanese company C.Illies & Co. developed increasingly conflictual. Differences in interest to the goals that were initially set together became more and more irreconcilable. Therefore, in March 1908, he ended his engagement in Japan for an indefinite period. During his collaboration with the Krupp company, he had generated business sales of around 40 million marks through his work. When his decision to leave Japan for the time being became known, a big farewell took place in his honor in March 1908, in which the Japanese Meiji - Tennō also took part. On March 18, 1908, Schinzinger and his wife started their journey home to Germany on board the Imperial Post steamer from Yokohama.

In Germany again

Back in Freiburg and more familiar with the situation in his hometown, Schinzinger bought the residence “Lorettoberg” in the vicinity of the city and called it “Villa Sakura”. This house, he imagined, should be a meeting place with something special Become habitus. So it developed in this direction through his renewed commitment. This place was particularly recommended to Japanese who were staying in Germany, Japanese students who completed individual semesters in Germany liked to come for discussions and scientific exchange. The birthday of the Tenno was celebrated here every year with great dignity . In 1909 Schinzinger was appointed honorary consul by the Japanese government . It was a special honor and he was promoted to major at almost the same time . On his part, great efforts were made to establish stable working relationships between the University of Freiburg and Japanese universities. From this time on, more and more Japanese students were studying in Freiburg. He himself gave a lecture on " Bushidō " in 1910, but in order to have a broader field of activity and greater acceptance, he took up relations with political associations in 1911 and became chairman of the regional Reich Party . However, since there were no positive improvements until 1912 and this party did not make it over the 3% quota in the elections, he refrained from doing so again after 1912. When Tenno died in Japan in June 1912, he organized a large-scale funeral ceremony to which he also invited numerous members of the German-Japanese community from Germany to Freiburg.

First World War

The relationship between Germany and Japan, which changed with the beginning of the First World War, and the entry of Japan as a partner of the German war opponents, disappointed Albert Schinzinger very much. He immediately resigned all his consular activities for Japan and wrote the article “Why?” For the regional newspaper in Freiburg. A request made to Krupp about its use in this context was negative. That is why he volunteered for military service . But since he was not found suitable for a front-line assignment at the age of 58, he was given an office job in his former unit in Ludwigsburg. After two years of office work, he was posted to the Prussian War Ministry and was used here to procure the necessary war materials. His special job was the procurement of cement . When he was forgotten after a year of service in this extremely difficult organizational work at an award round for the Iron Cross First Class, he immediately said goodbye and returned to Freiburg. But he did not want to come to terms with the events of the war defeat, which resulted in the establishment of the Weimar Republic . In an effort to imitate “his” emperor, he moved to the Netherlands in 1919 .

Entrepreneurs in Germany and Japan

Since there was no opportunity for Schenzinger in the Netherlands to follow his professional qualifications again, he returned to Germany in 1920 and took up residence in Berlin. Here he came into contact with naval officers, including the new head of the naval office Paul Behncke , the department head of the maritime transport department in the naval office Walter Lohmann , the former naval attaché of the German embassy in Tokyo Wolfram von Knorr and others, but due to the massive Downsizing within the previous naval organizations were without career prospects. They were joined by the economist Friedrich Wilhelm Hack , who had just come from Japan , who wanted to establish business contacts in Germany on behalf of the Japanese company Mitsubischi . Schenzinger and Hack both came from Freiburg, they had studied at the same university and both fathers had been medical colleagues at the University of Freiburg. In order to build on his earlier business activity, Schenzinger founded the import-export company Albert Schenzinger & Co. Friedrich Wilhelm Hack became his business partner and they began to acquire orders in the arms business between Germany and Japan, which however, due to the provisions of the Versailles Treaty, have been against 1919 violated the law. In addition to products and components for weapons production, drive motors for ships, aircraft and tanks, control and communications electronics, the future naval armament of both countries formed the main part of business activity. The starting point was that Japan had received several ships and submarines that exceeded the agreed capacity of the naval forces in Germany from 1920.

After consultation and agreement between the highest naval authorities of both countries, long-term and top-secret agreements were made that German know-how in ship and submarine construction could be handed over to Japan and that German naval engineers and designers could travel to Japan camouflaged to support the construction of modern naval armaments. A working group of former German naval officers was formed who accompanied this process on the side of Schinzinger and Hack in Japan. In return, in 1921, nine Japanese engineers were initially “accommodated” at the Krupp company in Germany in order to get an up- to-date picture of the state of submarine construction, military electronics and the development of communications technology . In addition to the intensification of the German-Japanese armaments business with broad-based orders from the Albert Schinzinger & Co. company, one of the most important secret projects that were set in motion at this time was the construction of a prototype of a German submarine at the naval shipyard in Osaka . Covered as a program of "scientific cooperation", the former naval attaché Wolfram von Knorr was the main coordinator from Tokyo from mid-1920. The mediation of German specialists for the "construction of engines and aircraft" for use "at the Kawasaki shipyard and at the Mitsubishi company in Kobe, where submarines and large electric motors were manufactured" ran through his office. But as the actual spiritus rector of the resumed business with Japan, Schinzinger was finally appointed Consul General for Germany and Japan in 1924. In May of the same year, Wilhelm Canaris stayed in Tokyo and at the shipyard in Osaka for six weeks on behalf of the German Naval Office, on a secret mission, to see for himself the progress of the armaments efforts and to get new projects underway bring. In the next few years Schinzinger commuted between Berlin and Tokyo. In the meantime he had also taken an apartment near the seat of the parliament of the Weimar Republic, the building of the Reichstag on the banks of the Spree.

On July 20, 1926, Albert Schinzinger died of a heart attack on a trip to Baden-Baden .

See also

• German-Japanese relations

Publications

• Co-initiator and co-editor of the magazine “German-Japanese Post”, appeared from 1902
• “Bow and Arrow”, OAG magazine - MOAG No. X, part 2, 1906
• "The Japanese falcons - species, their training and use for bird pickling", MOAG X. Part 3, 1906
• "Hunting Dogs in Ancient Japan," MOAG X, Part 3, 1906
• "Ancient Japanese Weapons", MOAG XI, Part 1, 1907
• Co-editor of: “Niku-dan. Human sacrifice. Diary of a Japanese officer during the siege and storming of Port Arthur ”, together with K. Nukaga, Japanese first edition 1907
• "Why?" Article of August 21, 1914 in the regional newspaper of Freiburg

literature

• Willi A. Boelche, Germany's arms dealings with Brazil, Krupp company history magazine, CH Beck Verlag
• Berthold J. Sander-Nagashima; German-Japanese naval relations 1919 to 1942, dissertation from the University of Hamburg, 1998
• Rolf Harald Wippich, Albert Schinzinger, article in the Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft, No. 64, volume 2016, issue 4, p. 341ff.
• Rolf Harald Wippich, an almost forgotten Japanese-German. Albert Schinzinger (1856–1926), OAG-Notizen, lecture on December 11, 2013 at the OAG in Tokyo, archive of the OAG
• Biographical data about Albert Schinzinger, in the Meiji project; on-line

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kösener Corp lists 1930, 36/344
2. ↑ Rolf Harald Wippich, Albert Schinzinger, article in the Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft, No. 64, volume 2016, issue 4, p. 341ff.
3. ↑ Willi A. Boelche, arms deals between Germany and Brazil, Journal of History Krupp, CH Beck Verlag
4. ↑ Brief data, personal details and publications on Alfred Schinzinger, archive of the OAG Tokyo, in: https://oag.jp/people/
5. ↑ Rolf Harald Wippich, An almost forgotten Japanese-German. Albert Schinzinger (1856–1926), OAG-Notizen, lecture on December 11, 2013 at the OAG in Tokyo, archive of the OAG
6. ↑ The Japanese first edition appeared in 1907 - the German edition was published in 1911.
7. ↑ Rolf Harald Wippich, An almost forgotten Japanese-German. Albert Schinzinger (1856–1926), OAG-Notizen, lecture on December 11, 2013 at the OAG in Tokyo, archive of the OAG, p. 16ff.
8. ↑ This is the name for the Japanese cherry blossom (Japanese 桜 sakura). It is one of the most important symbols of Japanese culture . It stands for beauty, awakening and transience.
9. ↑ Traditional Japanese term: Bushidō (Japanese 武士道, literally "way (dō) of the warrior (Bushi)"), it describes the code of conduct and the philosophy of the Japanese military nobility or a person from this caste
10. ↑ Berthold J. Sander-Nagashima; German-Japanese naval relations 1919 to 1942, dissertation from the University of Hamburg, 1998, p. 81
11. ↑ Michael Müller: Hitler's Abwehrchef, Ullstein Verlag Berlin, 2006, p. 23ff.